Let’s just jump into it!
Deck
The deck is about 100cm long, which is 6cm longer than the original Onsra Black Carve. Compared to other boards in the same category, it’s one of the longer ones. The amount of room to stand felt comfortable for me (182 cm).
The shape of the concave is quite nice. Like most other boards in this category, the concave is rather gentle, but it’s not just a shallow U-shape. There’s a bit more shape to it so you know where your feet are.
Drop-through mounted, slight drop-down. Foam grip tape that isn’t too grippy. Overall I like it.
Trucks
These are the same shitty double kingpin trucks used by many other brands. They’re shitty because you must compress the bushings a whole lot to ride at a decent speed without the board being too squirrely, even with all the bushings being 100A duro.
You can’t just change to using all barrel bushings with cup washers because that kind of setup won’t fit. These trucks were designed to use a barrel and cone on each kingpin. The only way to fit a barrel and barrel is to use a short barrel on the road side, which isn’t really better than a taller cone.
These trucks aren’t better or worse than most of the other double kingpin trucks out there.
Wheels
The stock wheels come in two options: 150 mm pneumatic tires and 115mm 74A rubber. They are both very comfortable. Obviously the bigger wheels can roll over more stuff but the rubber wheels also eat up a lot of road vibration.
In my range test the rubber wheels used about 15 Wh/km. For me that’s somewhere between Cloudwheels and pneumatic tires. These are much softer than Cloudwheels by the way. They’ll also wear down faster.
I didn’t range test with the pneumatics but they likely would have used about 17 Wh/km under the same conditions.
Battery
The battery is 648Wh, 21700 Samsung 50E, 12S3P, 15Ah. Some people have commented online that this battery cell would have a lot of battery sag. I didn’t experience noticeable sag until the battery was close to empty. Others have said these cells will degrade quickly. We’ll have to see I guess.
The battery charger is only 2.5A. To charge a 15Ah battery would take about 7 hours, which seems kind of excessive. A more powerful charger would be nice.
Motors
Dongxingwei 6368 motors, 170Kv, 2200W each. Those are Onsra’s claims. Other brands (Ownboard, WowGo, Verreal) that use Dongxingwei 6368 motors claim 1500W each. I don’t know if they’re different motors or were just measured differently.
Speed Controller & Remote
30A Hobbywing ESC, Hobbywing remote with telemetry display. My unit doesn’t have the standby feature but all units since June 4 should have it. Good, accurate, intuitive ESC and remote used by many many brands.
Speed & Brakes
Just based on feeling, it didn’t feel particularly faster or slower than most of its direct competitors.
I didn’t measure the top speed. Onsra claims 48 km/h with the rubber wheels, 46 km/h with the pneumatic tires. (Note that they use different pulleys.)
Brakes felt fine – again more or less like most of the direct competitors.
Range
In my range test I got 38 km when I rode down to about 10% battery (the remote gave me a 10% warning). That was with the rubber wheels, riding on mostly flat ground, speed around 25 to 35 km/h, normal acceleration most of the time. My weight was 78 kg with everything. Weather was 24 ºC.
Appearance
In terms of aesthetics, I think this board looks better than most of the direct competitors. I don’t feel like going into details but basically I like the look of the deck.
The shape of the enclosure looks all right. I like the shape of the original Black Carve’s enclosure more actually, but I like the matte finish of this one more. There are some imperfections at some of the screw holes though, like they look kind of chipped.
Anyway blah blah, said I won’t go into details. But I do want to point out one thing: zip ties. WTF. I mean, zip ties are great, just like duct tape is great, but they’re cheap solutions for something that’s supposed to be a premium product.
That battery port cover is annoying too. Somewhat difficult to push in, and looks cheap. Works fine though.
Worth Noting
I went on a downhill practice session with a friend and took this board along to get back up the hill after each run.
I changed the wheels to Boa Constrictors 100mm 83A. I would have liked to use smaller wheels but all of my wheels that use the Kegel core are 85mm or smaller in diameter, which is a bit small for the stock 45T pulleys.
My friend and I would take turns riding down the 0.8 km slope using our own longboards while the other person followed on the Onsra. Then we would both get back up the hill on the Onsra.
Myself, plus my friend (a small woman), plus our gear and two longboards, in total probably weighed about 130 kg. I think the slope on average was about 7 degrees, and we were able to do this for 15 runs before the battery gave up so that was about 12 km.
But the range is not my point – there were too many variables to make that a useful range test. The useful info I got was the power sag. The speed going uphill with all that weight remained consistent until the last couple of runs when the sag became very noticeable. So like I wrote earlier, I didn’t experience noticeable sag until the battery was near empty.
Side note: going down the hill on the Onsra – and probably most electric skateboards – was scary because brakes aren’t nearly as effective on a downhill slope as on flat ground. And with Boa’s 83A wheels the turns were very slippery.
When I said “follow” on the Onsra, I meant from a big distance since it needed a much bigger runway to brake and slow down for turns. In contrast, on our longboards, we could slow down or stop very quickly from sliding, and go through turns much more easily.
This isn’t a criticism of Onsra – most other e-boards are probably like this on a downhill slope. That’s my guess anyway. I’ve now ridden several electric skateboards uphill, but this was my first time trying to go fast on one downhill.
Final Thoughts
It’s not bad. I feel the build quality could be better. Right now I would say it feels like a slightly better looking WowGo AT2 with a bigger capacity battery.
Fabian says he’s trying to have 2-year warranty worldwide, which would be awesome, assuming the warranty is handled well.
Anyway watch my video – I share more thoughts in there.
I have discounts if you decide to buy this board.